No Post Today

We seem to be on an island in a warm, sunny place. Did that happen last Christmas? There’s a tiny little airport. We have to go back and forth picking people up. I ride shotgun. Roosters? Out the yingyang, and they crow all night. As for real crows, haven’t seen any yet. Also, lots of horses. There’s one right on the road!

This entry was posted
on Thursday, December 23rd, 2010 at 7:32 am and is filed under Chet The Dog.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

We have a busy day. Barb is working this afternoon, then tomorrow early she has to pack the car with gifts and leave for the suburbs to see the kids and grands. I get left behind at the Bed and Biscuit, but that’s ok. I sort of like to go there. Much better than the vets!

Barb can’t take me cause at her son’s house they have this dog named Morgan. She loves kids, but she does not like others of my kind. Then at her daughter’s they have Joe and Gus, the Newfies. They love me, but they only have underground fencing, so Barb is afraid that if someone opened a door, I might book
(Sorry, Bee to use book as a verb). There are lots of squirrls and deer around there, so this possibility does exist. Anyway, Barb will pick me up on Sunday, so I won’t be there too long.

Do you think Bernie, Chet, Mr A., SQ and Admin all went with Mr. A’s family to somewhere warm for the holidays?

Morning, y’all! Mom and Dad are going to Charleston today to see the sights — they always decorate so nicely there for Christmas. The first time my family went there after they moved to South Carolina, my girl noticed a deep-set window with a pineapple and greenery on the sill — outside! — and said, “Looks like someone’s been watching Martha Stewart!” Mom and Dad had to explain to her that the people of Charleston began decorating like that well before Martha Stewart started telling folks what to do! The good news is that my girl got home last night — with her two dogs and a “guest dog” in tow! So we have a full house. My boy and girl are staying home to relax, so they’ll be here to play with me today.

Happy Birthday Staff. My Great Grandmother’s birthday was on Christmas Day. She always insisted on a separate present for her Birthday (in addition to a Christmas present) saying that Baby Jesus wouldn’t want her Birthday celebration to go unnoticed! She was, before the phrase was coined, a piece of work.

Mix buttermilk and baking soda, add eggs, sugar vanilla, oil and salt. Mix well then gradually add flour. Once blended stir in fruit and nuts. Pour into greased pans and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Makes two loaf pans, one Bundt or four mini loafs. Adjust baking time based on pan size.

Christine’s Tips…I prefer to use chopped dried fruit rather than candied fruit. My favorite combination is cranberry, raisin, apricot. But, I have used many different combinations of dried fruit and they are all good (i.e. dates, apples, cherries, pineapple, etc). I have also used pecans which is very good.

BStover,
I have to admit that the taste of wine, actually any alcohol is nasty to me. I have never been able to drink it.
Well, I have had (back when I could have chocolate) about a teaspoon of mint schnapps in a mug of hot chocolate several times in my life. That is all.
I enjoy listening to you all talk about your lovely wines though.
So have a drink and raise a glass to me. That is the only way I would enjoy wine.

St. Lucia!…. I wonder if that’s where he came up with the great idea about Astrid a YEAR AGO!…snort!

Staff!… Happy Birthday!…grunt!….Card to come later in the day as we have a bazillion things to do today and of course, her mother calls and says come over because her brother whom she hasn’t seen since the funeral, is coming to visit….sneeze!….Why do our best laid plans always go asunder?…..gruffle!

Have a great day everyone. Barb is leaving shortly for errands and then work, at a not very busy place. No one wants to look at real estate 2 days before Christmas. She said she can check in later this afternoon.

Stover!… I don’t think so – we wasted a whole hour waiting for her brother to show up over at her mother’s…grump!… Now we are home again and totally flustered…grumble!…When he does finally show up and they go over to see Grandma, we will meet them there….sniff!

Mom says she agrees about Key West, as it is positively infested with chickens. When she was there last year there was a mama with 6 little chicks and the most amazing thing to her was that the daddy was with them too, and made sure none of the chicks wandered off. What a good rooster!

Yesterday was quite a day for us. There was a DEAD squirrel in the yard, and one of us (not saying who) brought it to the door for mom. I felt that her response was most ungrateful. It’s not like the pups get to go to the mall to do their shopping. She gave it away to the animal people without even enjoying it for awhile. I may just give her my presence for Christmas. She will not be able to give that away.

Rio: Sorry I just got back. I don’t think she should use the orange jello because the flavor is supposed to be from the pineapples and cream cheese. I use orange jello in another recipe with mandarin oranges. You put the oranges in to the jello mix immediately. When the jello just begins to set stir in a carton of cool whip. Delish.

Macy: Wonderful video. I’m still laughing. And those cats are so beautiful. Also, that rooster does seem devoted and your mom’s lack of appreciation of the squirrel is a bit much.

Dawson hasn’t told me about the pouding chomeur yet. I wrote about it on my blog today. I want to make it for a party I’m going to tomorrow night. The recipe looks like it feeds thousands…well, perhaps twelve. I’m baking two pies anyway so if the pouding isn’t good we’ll have pie.

For those interested in the lunar eclipse and the reason for the red moon, here is an explanation from my physics professor friend. (He wrote this in an email to friends and family but I asked if I could post it here and he said sure.)

Just to recap – the total lunar eclipse comes when the full moon passes into the Earth’s shadow (so, sun on one side, earth in the middle, moon on the other side .. thus full. If everything lines up exactly, the full moon can pass into the earth’s shadow). So, if in the shadow, you would think it would go dark in the middle .. instead it goes red? Well, luckily we on Earth have an atmosphere .. otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this now! And so, when everything lines up to create the eclipse, there is some light that bends around the edges of the earth through the atmosphere and reflects off the moon back to us. Now, with sun on one side and moon on the other .. it is basically the middle of the night for the eclipse (whoever sees the eclipse at the highest point in the sky .. it will be midnight there) – thus the light has to be coming from the edges of the earth .. where it is either sunrise or sunset thus the light that goes to the moon is the reds/oranges of the sunrise/sunset light – thus the moon is red during the middle of the eclipse!

(Bonus info: .. why red/orange at sunrise/sunset? Light gets scattered by dust/water particles in the air .. blue light scatters better at larger angles than the longer wavelength red light .. so when we look toward the sun at sunrise/sunset .. most of the blue light has scattered away, leaving only the reds/oranges. When we look up in the sky (not toward the sun) – the oranges/reds are moving past us, and the blue scatters down to us. Why doesn’t the area near the sun always look red/orange .. such as when it is high in the sky? Well, at sunrise/sunset the light is passing through a much longer stretch of atmosphere (as opposed to just poking through vertically) – thus the blue light has more chance to scatter away.)

Cook to disolve the jello in the juice of the pineapple plus enough of the Coke to make 1 cup. Once it is dissolved (follow package directions) add the rest of the Coke, the pineapple, and the drained cherries. Stir well. Pour into Great-Grandma Ward’s pretty bowl, refrigerate until set.

Looks like cranberry sauce, tastes wonderfully tangy, and I don’t even like pineapple. Especially good for weight conscious folks who want to feel virtuous before they hit the pies, and for diabetics as well.

Kat video review: That’s how I try to play with Mom, but she won’t play. Something about she needs to be Alpha because after I play a while, then I want to nip and bite. Those kitties have a good routine going.

Grump!….So guess who’s been at the grocery story standing in line, for the most part, for two hours?….grunt!…Yup and she is not a happy camper right now….snuff!… There is no way in hell she is going back there to get any more ingredients….snort!… Her whole day has been blown apart. She threw up her hands and said., “I give up!”. I guess this means that her friends gift probably won’t be done by tomorrow morning and her pineapple jello salad is going to taste like crap!… grunt!

I haven’t posted for a while; it’s been crazy at the store and I’ve been working a lot of overtime. By the time I get finished with what has to be done around the house, most of you have signed off for the day so I don’t bother.
Rio,
FYI Your package is on the way. I sent your special card the other day and it came back. I guess it was too thick for the Post Office. Maybe they thought it was a bomb.
The cookie I promised you is in the box also. It’s late because my baker didn’t get around to pupcakes and cookies until yesterday and just delivered today. You won’t have the box by Christmas, but it should be there well before New Years.

If they didn’t build grocery stores with fourteen checkout stations they wouldn’t be able to close 12 of them to keep us in line. I, too, waited so long this afternoon that I gave up and put the few items I had back on the shelf and walked out. At least my dish won’t taste like crap. It just won’t taste at all.

Lines!…. She wasn’t in line the whole 2 hours, it just took that long to get out of there….sniff!… She was able to get her groceries relatively, quickly given the crowd, just stuff for a fruit basket gift for a good neighbor, and the few things needed for Christmas dinner…grunt!…More than 15 items though, so when she tried to get in line at the checkout she was told she had to go to the End of the Line which was isle 20 the farthest away from the check out counters and then way down along the frozen ice cream treats… wheeze!….She said she couldn’t even see the check out counters for at least 20 minutes….sniff! … Poor thing, now she has given up all hope of doing everything she wanted to. Instead we are watching an episode of Pysch because her feet hurt and she is grumpy….snort! … It all went downhill when her brother decided to visit this morning and showed up late….grunt!… She did meet them at Grandma’s and it was fun, she had her brother laughing very hard over stories about people in the Home who Grandma has had run-ins with. Funny stuff! (after the fact) …heh!

I have been tempting myself by looking at new laptops on the computer. So far I haven’t succumbed. I keep thinking I can put some of my Birthmus money towards one.
Unfortunately this one keeps on working. Drat it all. I have no excuse.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I appreciate them. And the cat video’s and cards. Funny.

LizF: oddly enough, for me every degree below -30 counts. So there is a lot of difference between -37 and -30. Probably it is my fault because I could dress better for it but how much time do you want to spend putting on gear when you are only outside a short time? Plus when you are at a store, you then end up way too hot and your gear ends up filling the shopping cart.

I seem to be comfortable down to -30 but after that it starts getting painful. I can dress for -40 and do ok; at -50 I am slightly cold no matter how I gear up and at -60 and -70 it is just beyond comprehension how cold that is. You have a hard time breathing and your eyelashes knit together because you are squinting so hard trying to protect your eyeballs from freezing.

Also at anything colder than -30 I can get grumpy–can you tell? Now the weatherman says it’s going to be these temperatures through Christmas so two more days of this. Someday I am going to live somewhere with four distinct seasons. {{{{sigh}}}}

Staff!…Rockie has finally come through with our happy birthday wishes for you!…grunt!…He’s been a busy squirrel, trying to stock up for winter an all…heh!…Here is the card I commissioned him to present to you! With Love of Course!…snuffle!

YIKES. I don’t blame you for being grumpy, it’s impossible to imagine -30, let alone -60!! I’m still surprised that people manage to survive there, especially when it’s hard to breathe and there’s even a chance your eyeballs might freeze.

I would like a day of doing nothing for Christmas . . . I know it’s only 8:00 but I’m already head to bed.

Thank goodness for YSAS. I had to give him the “look.”

I get tired easily, my day was planned out to make sure that I wouldn’t get zonked. Then the hospital struck again.

The meeting with the hospitalist, the case manager and the social worker was to have started at 2:00. It should have lasted about ten minutes. YSAS and I arrived an hour ahead of time to see Dan. Had a good time. At 1:55 pm I walked to the nurses’s station and asked them to call the person who was in charge of this meeting. At 2:10, the woman arrived and said they would be back as soon as the doctor was ready. Heard that? READY. HA!

At 2:25, the three walk in. It is a different hospitalist than we were expecting, and I didn’t know that he had already dealt with Zoë.

He asks if there are any questions. I look at him with disbelief and said, you are supposed to have information for us. The two women step in sort of apologizing.

Something doesn’t smell right. I take Zoë’s list of questions and start with the first one. He said he don’t know the answer to that, he hadn’t read the file.

Deja Vu all over again?

I lost it. Said the meeting was supposed to have started at 2, I have a chronic illness I’m getting tired and this is what we get?

The ladies there said that I didn’t have to come in early. The meeting wasn’t until 2.

I snarled, I was there to visit my father. . .

Then I “looked” at YSAS.

He said later, that acting is 99.9% reacting. He reacted. It was awesome. He was wonderful.

He said that hospitalists being on 3 days at a time made no sense, that they had no sense of their patients (I heard the doc muttering in the background, when am I supposed to see my family, I did not comment)

He then went on to say that the man in the bed might be his grandfather, but having raised him, Dan was his father, and it (will now asterisk all swear words) ** the ** out of him that they were ** neglecting his father. That at this point he was considering hiring a PI to come in and (can’t remember the exact words) put them under a ** microscope.

They were a bit taken back. Dan was grinning. All they said was, the meeting was at two, and was a little late.

YSAS started in again. Don’t you ** see that it isn’t the late meeting that is the ** problem, it’s that there is not ** meeting. This isn’t a meeting. You are unprepared. You could have taken five more ** minutes to look at the chart and done what you are *** supposed to do.

I then said, that they were going to find the answers to those questions, not tell my father only, but to call Zoë and explain to her what is going on, and for their sakes they better make it quick. And NO, I was not going to wait, I was now way too tired and upset.

One of the ladies said that Dan had a room at one of the nursing homes on our list and was only waiting for us to say yes. I said, have you called Zoë?

No, but you can say yes. No I can’t, I’m NOT his health care proxy person.

YSAS took over and said if you *** idiots would do your ** jobs life would be a lot easier for everyone.

Needless to say we cleared the room. Called Zoë, explained that she would be getting calls. She asked which hospitalist it was and I told her it wasn’t the one she had thought but . . .

She said, Oh, he’s an **. Had to agree with her on that one.

So we don’t know what’s up. Lots of calls going here and there. One lady is trying to mess things up for Dan and Zoë now has two nasty phone calls to her.

I hope Zoë can sleep. We told Zoë we hope we hadn’t ruined it for Dan. And she said How could we, it was already terrible and we hadn’t said anything she hadn’t already said.

I asked YSAS what persona he used. He said that was me.

He can be scary.

Going to bed. Will read today’s tomorrow. Wish I was with Chet on a warm Island with Dan, Zoë, the family and the Pack.

Whooo eeee.
When it gets to -20 and below, every single degree makes a big, big difference to me. Like whether your eyeballs are gonna freeze in one second …or two.
B.Stover: I must admit I have never heard of Pouding Chomear. I did “google” it and it sure looks good. Let me know how it works out.
Rio: How is your friend’s wrist?
Macy MinPin: Love the Patty cake video.
Thanks for all the recipes, Plunderers.

Melanie, Husky hugs to all of you and I hope the family gets a good night’s rest. I wish we could send these imbecils on a one way trip to the moon. They should not have jobs in health care. I’m so glad YSAS is there. He did great today!

Crazy!…. I just want to say one thing…grunt!…C.Harris is completely crazy!…sniff!…There, I said it…gruff!…We here wish her the best this winter, but wonder why in the hell she is subjecting herself to such inhumane torture…sniff!…All we can agree on is that she is completely and utterly Crazy…sneeze!

Mean while!…. Spencer and gang are in the Caribbean enjoying the lovely warm weather, snorkeling and spear fishing giving us no mind at all…grump!…When the hell will the Astrid case be completed is what I want to know!…growl!…It seems Flow-charts and complete documentation are still not enough for him to figure out who did it or why?….grunt!

I don’t think C.Harris is crazy. I admire her for being able to tough it out. It takes an unbelieveable amount of hard work to survive and function in that climate. There would be good things about that life…like the northern lights, the beauty of the land, and no crowds of people.

Rio, We ****loved the card from Rocky to Staff. Would have loved to see the performance this afternoon, Melanie. YSAS did a ****awesome job! This could start a whole new way of writing on the blog. Good night, all. We have an early start tomorrow.

Cussing!…I am so amazed and surprised at you all for using implied Cuss Words so flippantly…grunt!…I thought I was the only one who cussed on this here blog…snort!…Well, good grief!…cough!…Although I do not use the **** when I want to say something, I guess that is a plus on your sides…wheeze! …Boy, oh boy, I thought I knew you guys!…heh!

Staff!…You will never figure me out!…Be as you may, be as you might…grunt!…One thing is for sure, we all appreciate the hard work you did on the Quilt which is now hanging in Spencer’s Office girl!… snort!…How amazing is that? All because of you and everyone who contributed. That’s how we are now part of his everyday trance like state while he works diligently on the next Chet and Bernie Book!…heh!heh!…You all have got to love that my friends!…gruff! yeep!

Tired!…All of you seem to be in bed already, we here are very near to our warm soft Big Bed (yeep)!!!….sniff! …I just want to say what a joy you all are to my day in and day out of existence. This blog brings a whole new dimension to my daily life…gruff!…Oh sure, I could live without it, but my life would lack a certain dimension without you guys. …snuffle!…In my day to day life, I actually find it quite hard to meet new guys who like the same things I like, so this here blog offers a great way to meet pals who might end up being friends for life because we enjoy the same things!…..heh!….I think we should all show up at Debbie’s big dinner next year!…grunt!..Wouldn’t that be fun????….sigh!…I’m IN!..heh!